An optical fiber amplification. system includes: a first optical fiber amplifier including a first optical amplifying fiber including a core portion doped with a first rare-earth. element, a first input unit configured to receive first signal light, an excitation-light source configured to output pump light, a pump light combiner configured to input the pump light to the first optical amplifying fiber, and a residual pump light recovery device configured to recover residual pump light; and a second optical fiber amplifier including a second optical amplifying fiber including a core portion doped with a second rare-earth. element, a second input unit configured to receive second signal light, and a residual pump light combiner configured to input, to the second optical amplifying fiber, the residual pump light recovered by the residual pump light recovery device.

An optical fiber connector includes: amplifying fibers in which an active element activated by excitation light is added to a core of each of the amplifying fibers. The amplifying fibers are connected together such that an absorption amount of excitation light per unit length increases with an increase of a distance from an incident end of the excitation light. A mode field diameter of laser light propagating through the core is same among the amplifying fibers.

An optical fiber configured to improve the pump conversion efficiency of an L-band fiber amplifier which uses the multimode pump source. By directly absorbing multimode light including 915 nm, an active fiber core region co-doped with both erbium and ytterbium can provide gain to the L-band signals via stimulated emission. The unwanted C-band amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) light generate from this active fiber core region can be absorbed by another active fiber core region doped with erbium, then provides additional gain to the L-band signals. Active regions and cladding can be configured to match a given spatial mode of the optical signal. Signal-pump combiners with end-coupling or side coupling can be used.

Various example embodiments relate to active optical fibers and devices using active optical fibers. An active optical fiber may comprise a central part surrounded by an annular active core. The fiber may have a tapered longitudinal profile such that the fiber comprises a single-mode portion and a multimode portion. The annular core may have low birefringence, obtained for example by rotating (spinning) the fiber preform during manufacture of the fiber. Refractive index of the annular core may be higher than the refractive indices of the central part and cladding layer(s) surrounding the annular core. The active optical fiber enables selective generation or amplification of light modes with orbital angular momentum (OAM). Furthermore, the fiber has a large mode field diameter (MFD) and it is not sensitive to internal heating or environmental influences.

An optical amplifying fiber includes: at least one single core portion doped with a rare-earth element; an inner cladding portion configured to enclose the at least one core portion, the inner cladding portion having a lower refractive index than maximum refractive index of each core portion; and an outer cladding portion configured to enclose the inner cladding portion, the outer cladding portion having a lower refractive index than refractive index of the inner cladding portion, wherein the inner cladding portion includes a plurality of air bubbles.

A multi-core optical amplifying fiber includes: core portions doped with a rare-earth element; an inner cladding portion; and an outer cladding portion. A mode field diameter of each core portion at a wavelength at which the rare-earth element performs optical amplification is 5 μm to 11 μm, a relative refractive-index difference of the maximum refractive index of each core portion with respect to the inner cladding portion is 0.35% to 2%, a core-to-core distance is set such that total inter-core crosstalk is −40 dB/100 m or lower in an optical amplification wavelength band subjected to the optical amplification, a cladding thickness is smaller than a value obtained by adding the mode field diameter to a minimum value of the core-to-core distance, and a ratio of a total sectional area of the core portions to a sectional area of the inner cladding portion is 1.9% or more.

A bidirectional mode-locked fiber laser includes first and second passive optical fibers, a doped optical fiber, first and second polarization controllers, and first and second polarized beamsplitters that are arranged as a ring cavity with clockwise (CW) and counter-clockwise (CCW) directions. The laser imparts different nonlinear phase shifts in the CW and CCW directions, corresponding to CW and CCW repetition rates that are slightly different. When the normalized difference in repetition rates is less than approximately 10.sup.−5, both directions can be mode-locked simultaneously, thereby preventing one direction from inhibiting mode-locking of the other direction. Optical-fiber nonlinearity implements an intra-cavity bidirectional artificial saturable absorber based on nonlinear polarization rotation. The laser uses only components with normal group-velocity dispersion (GVD), thereby achieving higher pulse energies than mode-locked lasers utilizing negative GVD. The combination of artificial saturable absorber and normal GVD components increases pulse energy, which improves the efficiency of spectral broadening.

An optical fiber securing structure includes: an optical fiber including a coating, and a coating-removed section in which a partial section of the coating is removed from the optical fiber; a reinforcement member including main surfaces and a groove formed from one of the main surfaces toward an inside of the reinforcement member, where the groove has a pair of side walls and a bottom wall; and a resin member that secures the coating-removed section to the pair of side walls and the bottom wall. A bottom part of the groove that includes the bottom wall has a widthwise cross-sectional shape where the bottom wall constitutes a trapezoidal shape such that a distance between the pair of side walls becomes greater in a direction away from the bottom wall.

An optical amplifier includes one or more rare earth element-doped optical fibers each including one or more cores, two or more excitation light sources per single core of the one or more rare earth element-doped optical fibers, configured to emit excitation light for exciting a rare earth element added to the one or more rare earth element-doped optical fibers according to a driving current, and a synthesizing part configured to synthesize the excitation light emitted from the two or more excitation light sources per single core. Two or more cores are provided in total, and the excitation light emitted from the two or more excitation light sources per single core is synthesized and input with respect to each core.

Light amplification devices using coupled multi-core optical fibers have a figure of merit that temporally varies, which makes it difficult to perform performance evaluation and to build a light transmission system using the same. Accordingly, a light amplification device of the present invention comprises: a band control means that controls the wavelength band of a light carrier to generate a band control light; and a band control light amplification means that has a plurality of light amplification media through which the band control light propagates, wherein the band control light amplification means amplifies the band control light in a coupled state in which the light propagating through the plurality of light amplification media induces a crosstalk and wherein the band control means controls the wavelength band such that the band control light having propagated through the plurality of light amplification media has a reduced coherence.